PAN AMERICAN GAMES

PAN AMERICAN GAMES; All Over Cuba, Beisbol Is the Tie That Binds

By WILLIAM C. RHODEN,

Published: August 5, 1991

HAVANA, Aug. 4—
For all of the contrasting cultural and religious currents here, there is a simple connecting thread. It is baseball.

"Baseball in Cuba is the passion," said Gilberto Dihigo, a columnist for a Havana newspaper. "Baseball is the the love, the madness."

"For baseball," Dihigo said, "marriages break up in Cuba."

Although there are no polls or surveys to pull from, it seems that there is hardly anyone in this city who does not have deep roots in organized baseball. Dihigo's are deeper than most.

His father, Martin, is a legendary figure in Cuban and American Negro leagues baseball. A member of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., Dihigo is listed as a pitcher but played every position on the field. Once during a doubleheader, Dihigo pitched the first game and caught the second.

In many ways, he symbolizes the passion. Like Father, Like Son

Cuba opened the Pan American Games baseball competition this afternoon with a game against Nicaragua.

An hour an a half before the game, fans lingered around Latino Americano Stadium in Havana. The stadium was completed in 1947, the year Dihago retired.

Cheerleaders sat on the home-team dugout and drummers beat timbales and bells as Armando -- the unofficial Cuban national fan -- led cheers.

The Cubans have won five consecutive Pan American baseball championships, but for the last three weeks there has been concern. The national team's best pitcher is injured, another pitcher defected and the catcher is hurt.

It barely mattered this afternoon. En route to a rainswept 14-6 victory, the Cubans put on an awesome home display, blasting seven home runs, including three in a row in the eighth inning.

A day before the competition, Omar Linares, Cuba's star third baseman and power hitter, said there was no cause for alarm.

"The pressure is not on us," he said. "We are at home, we are with our fans, we're prepared.

At 23, Linares is the latest in a long line of outstanding Cuban baseball players. Although he made the elite national team in 1987, he has played at the provincial and select levels since he was 14. His career average is .366, including 201 home runs and 570 runs batted in. Blue Jays, Expos Interested

The Toronto Blue Jays and Montreal Expos have already expressed an interest in Linares, but he said he was not interested in the professional life.

"Professional athletes leave out sports," he said. "Everything is to make money off sport, not sport. In our our case we have our jobs beside baseball, we have our lives. It's very different."

Linares was born in Pinar del Rio province, where he is an elected official, and grew up watching his father play for the provincial team. "He never forced me to play baseball," Linares said. "He told me I could choose my career."

The choice wasn't difficult.

He attended a school of sports until he was 14 years old. He said that one of the proudest moments in his life was when he made the Cuban junior national team, made up primarily of 17- , 18- and 19-year-olds, when he was 14. "My heart was filled with emotion," he recalled. "That was one of the most important days of my life."

Cuban teams are divided into two baseball conferences: Western and Eastern. The season lasts from November to January. After that the best players from provincial teams play on seven select teams from February to May.

The Cuban national team is then picked from the best players from the select teams.

"The goal, the dream of every child is to make the national team," Linares said. "That is what we all dream of."

Indeed, in practically every park and alley from Havana in the west to Santiago in the east, the children play stickball or compete in organized leagues.

Before 1961, a Cuban player might dream of playing major league baseball in the United States. But because of the cold relations between the United States and Cuba the opportunity has been shut off. The focus now is on provincial, select and international competition.

Linares, when pressed about his aspirations in baseball, insisted that he is content to remain an amateur.

"My goal," he said, "is to help Cuba win all the tournaments we play in and continue bringing medals and awards to Cuba. That's the will of all athletes in Cuba."